Ian McDougall

Professor Ian McDougall is a practising architect, writer and teaching in architecture with 30 years experience in the industry. He began architecture at Adelaide University in the early 1970s, completing his degree in Melbourne.

He is a founding and current director of Ashton Raggatt McDougall, a national practice, that has established an international reputation for cutting edge architectural design. Since its formation in 1988, the firm has completed significant and influential projects, such as the National Museum of Australia, Canberra and the master planning of Melbourne Docklands. Ian’s interests are in architectural design as a cultural discipline both in individual buildings, evidenced in projects such as Marion Cultural Centre, Shrine of Remembrance and the Melbourne Recital Centre / MTC Theatres Complex, and evidenced in urban design, as in the Docklands work. He is an experienced urban designer, with a knowledge based on measured studies of the street, lane and arcade systems of Melbourne and Sydney. In the area of retail planning, he has compiled case study layouts of typical major retail centres in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

He has written critical essays and reviews for a wide range of journals and newspapers. He was cofounder and long term editor of Transition Magazine, a past editor of Architect Victoria and of Architecture Australia.

He has been teaching since 1982, beginning by taking Architectural History at RMIT. Since then, he has taught Design at RMIT (currently Adjunct Professor of Architecture) and University of Western Australia (visiting Professor 1992), with guest sessions at University of Sydney, Deakin University and University of Melbourne. He is a regular speaker at conferences, most recently as a keynote at the New Zealand Institute of Architects conference and the RAIA “Exchange” National Conference (both 2005).

He was President of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Victoria) in 2000-02 and also national treasurer of the RAIA twice. He is currently a board member of the Venice Biennale Committee. In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary Medal for his contribution to Australian Architecture.

Ian joined the University of Adelaide in 2007 and teaches in urban design and architectural design, with some participation in theory and history.

Ian is a believer in the capacity of architects to create meaningful designs through ideas and speculations generated from cultural readings and imagery. He teaches students in the design studio to combine the potential of creativity with the reality of actual building and urban projects. He believes that the creative experimentation and exploration designers undertake through the design process constitutes research, to be assessed, evaluated and built upon as a body of knowledge.

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